City Lights: Illuminating the American Night. In the Watches of the Night: Life in the Nocturnal City, 1820–1930. "Before Cities Had Street Lights, They Had Giant Towers That Mimicked the Moon". Archived from the original on 14 March 2012. ^ "Progress Report Austin - Legends of Austin k2".Houston Freeways: A Historical and Visual Journey. ![]() After the Minneapolis City Council voted to remove the tower in 1892, its signature copper ball sat in the window of a local saloon. The tower's eight 4,000 candlepower arc lights cast stark shadows and failed to illuminate streets. In 1883, Minneapolis, Minnesota, built a single 275-foot (84 m) tall "electric mast" in the Gateway District to eliminate the need for 150 gas lamps in the vicinity at a cost of $500. The system covered about 21 square miles (54 km 2), but soon had to be supplemented with incandescent lighting in the city center, partly because trees interfered with the light, and by the turn of the century they remained only in Cadillac Square the towers were soon removed there, too. The towers were masts secured with cables and were maintained daily by crews who hauled themselves to the top using a counterweighted elevator. In front of City Hall, Detroit, Michigan, about 1900ĭetroit, Michigan, had a particularly extensive system of light towers inaugurated in 1882 with 122 towers, 175 feet (53 m) tall and 1,000–1,200 feet (300–370 m) apart downtown, shorter, less powerful, and twice as far apart elsewhere. Moonlight towers in Austin, Texas, near TxDOT headquarters, served as inspiration for some of the first high-mast lighting towers in the US in the 1960s and 1970s. As incandescent electric street lighting became common, the prevalence of towers began to wane. Arc lamps, known for their exceptionally bright and harsh light, were the most common method of illumination. The towers were designed to illuminate areas often of several blocks at once, on the "high light" principle. ![]() ![]() In other places they were used in addition to gas street lighting. In some places they were used when standard street-lighting, using smaller, shorter, and more numerous lamps, was impractically expensive. The towers were popular in the late 19th century in cities across the United States and Europe they were most common in the 1880s and 1890s. Structure, generally over 50 meters tall, for large-scale electric street lightingĪ moonlight tower or moontower is a lighting structure designed to illuminate areas of a town or city at night.
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